June 28, 2007

White House Rejects Congressional Subpoenas

UPDATED.

As expected, the White House is invoking executive privilege in response to an order from the Senate and House judiciary committees to hand over documents related to a round of firings of federal prosecutors last year.

In a letter to the committees, White House counsel Fred Fielding said President Bush "was not willing to provide your committees with documents revealing internal White House communications or to accede to your desire for senior advisors to testify at public hearings," AP reports. The senior advisers in question are Fielding's predecessor, Harriet Miers, and former White House political director Sara Taylor.

The effort to force transparency on the firings is a bipartisan one, and lawmakers have hinted that they are willing to take the executive branch to court in order to wrest documents and testimony relevant to the firings. Whether they actually do so while Congress is mired in a battle over immigration reform and an exit strategy from the Iraq war remains to be seen.

Legal Times has an excellent backgrounder on this White House's resistance to the attorneys firing probe.

Posted at 9:38 AM
Posted to: Attorney Scandal, Bush Administration, Congress, Dick Cheney, President Bush
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